LINGUIST List 15.2541

Mon Sep 13 2004

Calls: General Ling/Spain; Pragmatics/Italy

Editor for this issue: Amy Wronkowicz <amylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. helmut.daller, 5th International Symposium on Bilingualism
2. geert.jacobs, Institutional Perspectives on Press Releases

5th International Symposium on Bilingualism
Short Title: ISB5

Date: 20-Mar-2005 - 23-Mar-2005
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Contact: Melissa Moyer
Contact Email: isb5uab.es
Meeting URL: http://isb5.uab.es

Linguistic Sub-field: General Linguistics

Call Deadline: 25-Sep-2004

Meeting Description:

The 5th International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB5) will be
organized in Barcelona (Spain) by the Universitat Aut�noma de
Barcelona in collaboration with the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the
Universitat de Barcelona. This forum includes all areas of language
and linguistics related to the field of Bilingualism. For further
information contact isbuab.es or check the web http://isb5.uab.es

CALL FOR PAPERS

COLLOQUIUM ON THE MEASUREMENT OF BILINGUAL PROFICIENCY ACROSS TWO
LANGUAGES: METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS

At the 5th International Symposium on Bilingualism (March 20 - 23,
2005 Barcelona, see also http://isb5.uab.es)

Convenor: Helmut Daller and Jeanine Treffers-Daller (both University
of the West of England, Bristol)

Please contact helmut.dalleruwe.ac.uk or
Jeanine.Treffers-Dalleruwe.ac.uk if you are interested in presenting
a paper at this colloquium.

The focus of this colloquium will be on methodological issues when
comparing different measures of language proficiency across languages
with structural differences. Many studies on bilingual language
proficiency focus only on one language. This is a serious
methodological flaw since the complexity of bilingual proficiency is
not taken into account. The proposed colloquium will bring together
researcher who will contribute towards a better understanding of what
Grosjean (1997: 165) has called the complementarity principle: the
fact that bilinguals use their languages for different purposes and in
different domains of life. Therefore both languages have to be taken
into account. However, research on immigrant bilinguals in Europe face
the challenge that the language pairs under investigation show large
structural differences in many cases (e.g. French/Arabic,
Dutch/Turkish, Russian/German and other pairs). How can we make sure
that the measures of proficiency in these language pairs are
comparable? We invite contributions of researchers who address this
problem in their work, be it within quantitative or qualitative
research frameworks.

Grosjean, F. (1997) "The bilingual individual. Interpreting:
International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting, (1/
2), 163 -187.

Institutional Perspectives on Press Releases 

Date: 10-Jul-2005 - 15-Jul-2005
Location: Riva del Garda, Italy
Contact: Geert Jacobs
Contact Email: geert.jacobsugent.be 

Linguistic Sub-field: Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics 

Call Deadline: 01-Oct-2004

This is a session of the following conference: 9th International
Pragmatics Conference

Meeting Description:

Geert Jacobs (Ghent, Belgium) and Henk Pander Maat (Utrecht, the
Netherlands) propose a panel on ''Institutional Perspectives on Press
Releases'' for the 9th International Pragmatics Conference at Riva del
Garda, Italy, 10-15 July 2005.

For more information about the conference and all formal requirements:
check out http://www.ipra.be

If you're interested in taking part, please send us your abstract by 1
Oct. The deadline for sending in your abstract to IPrA is 15 Oct.

While press releases have recently started to attract quite some
interest, both in media and communication studies and within the broad
field of linguistic pragmatics, so far little or no attention has been
paid to the wide-ranging institutional contexts in which they are
being used. For the first time then this panel proposes to bring
together various perspectives on how these institutional contexts
affect the language of press releases. In particular, the following
institutional contexts can broadly be distinguished:

- the organizations issuing press releases: including businesses
(which have been the dominant focus in the analysis of press
releases), government agencies and scientific communities
- those who distribute press releases: international news agencies and
specialized subscription-based press release distribution services
- the media using press releases in writing up their own reports: from
quality newspapers and tabloids to special interest magazines and
internet newsletters

Some of the areas that will be focused on include issues of
self-reference, pseudo-quotations, the use of promotional language,
structure (headlines, lead paragraph, boilerplate, etc.). One of our
objectives is to help unravel to what extent these different
institutional contexts can be linked up with the central concept of
preformulation, which means that press releases are typically written
in such a style that they need little or no reworking on the part of
journalists.

All contributions to the panel are based on empirical analyses of
press releases, news reports and the institutional contexts in which
they are used. The scope of analytical approaches and methods will
enable us to address questions concerning methods of inquiry and
investigation as well as reaching a deeper understanding of the
complex discursive practices that lie at the heart of the news
production process.